Equinoxes

“On March 20, 2009, at precisely 7:44 am EDT (March 20, 11:44 Universal Time), the Sun will cross directly over the Earth's equator. This moment is known as the vernal equinox in the Northern Hemisphere. For the Southern Hemisphere, this is the moment of the autumnal equinox.” http://www.infoplease.com/spot/riteofspring1.html

I promised several months ago (on the winter solstice) to write about the equinoxes at some point. As today is the vernal equinox, the official beginning of spring, here it is.

The term equinox is Latin for equal night. On the equinoxes (both spring – vernal and fall – autumnal) there are exactly 12 hours of daylight and 12 hours of darkness for every part of the planet from the North Pole through the Equator on south to the South Pole. These are the only two days a year when that is true.

The Sun’s apparent path in the sky, called the Ecliptic, is due to Earth’s orbit around the sun. The concept of the zodiac is related to this. The sun goes through different constellations (again from Earth’s perspective) during the course of a year. The planets roughly follow this path, too, which is why you’ll never find Mars in the far north of the sky (as viewed from the Northern Hemisphere), but you might see it in Gemini, the Twins (a winter constellation), or Sagittarius, the Centaur archer (a summer constellation).

The night sky has been mapped out like an extension of Earth. A projection of Earth’s North Pole into the sky is called the Celestial North Pole; a projection of the Equator is the Celestial Equator, and so forth.

On the equinoxes, the Ecliptic crosses the Celestial Equator. This means that the Sun will rise due East and set due West on those days. Because folks today do not pay much attention to where the Sun rises and sets, many may think that this is usually the case, but that is not true.

From the perspective of the continental United States, the Sun’s path changes in the following ways over the course of a year. On the winter solstice, the Sun rises the farthest south of east that it ever rises, goes up to the lowest altitude in the sky for the year, and quickly sets again in the farthest south of west position that it ever sets. For a position with a latitude of 38 degrees North (where I live), the Sun rises to be about 29 degrees above the Southern horizon at noon on the winter solstice. The Sun, during the next several months, seems to rise a little more north of its position from the previous day, until, on the vernal equinox, it rises due east, gets up to a middling height, and sets due west. From 38 degrees North, the Sun rises to be 52 degrees above the Southern horizon at noon on the equinox. That’s 23.5 degrees higher than it was on the winter solstice, because the Earth is tilted at an angle of 23.5 degrees. Not surprisingly, then, on the summer solstice, when the Sun is the highest that it will be all year, it’s at a height of about 75 degrees when viewed from the northern US.

Having always lived in the continental US, it was a unique experience for me to be able to see the Sun in the north in the middle of the day when I visited Costa Rica. The Sun had always been to my south at noon for my entire life. In the summer in Costa Rica, at a latitude of 9 degrees North, the Sun passes through the zenith (a point directly overhead) during early summer and stays in the northern part of the sky during much of the summer. The tropics of Cancer and Capricorn (at 23.5 degrees North and South latitude) are called that, because the sun passes through the zenith there one time per year. The sun passes through the zenith only on the solstice in June for the tropic of Cancer (its summer solstice) and the solstice in December for the tropic of Capricorn (its summer solstice, our winter solstice). That’s why the tropics are so warm. The Sun rises to be very high in the sky there every day of the year and the length of day does not change very much there over the course of the year.

I’m beginning to realize that I have gotten so used to teaching this with pictures that it is very hard to describe only in words. This all makes a lot more sense when there are pictures to go along with the explanations. I don’t have more time just now, but please feel free to ask questions or make comments, especially with help in making what I’m trying to say more clear for a non-astro person.

Thanks! And happy equinox!

Giving and Receiving

I have decided to try to share something of what I'm learning in seminary with others. I like to talk, but I also realize that I don’t have the time to be able to explain everything that I want to say in ways that I believe others may understand. I have to sometimes assume that people will see what I’m saying and wait for questions if that’s not the case. Other times, I’m sure that I err on the side of over-explaining.

Today, I’m pondering giving and receiving and hospitality, boundaries and propriety. I think, due to time constraints, I’ll have to just do the first part today.

I remember what Christine (Lane) Stonecliff said on a Valentine’s day several years ago about giving and receiving love. She had been reading a book about how people have different ways that they give and accept it. I don’t remember the order, but this is what I remember:

1) Touch and physical affection

2) Service – doing things for someone or having them do things for you

3) Gifts – physical representations of how much you care.

4) Words – compliments and ways that you point out verbally how you care

This book said that while these are the different ways that people give and receive love, not everyone sees all 4 as loving in the same way, or at all. Often, couples will give and receive love differently.

This comes to an idea from Stephen Covey’s _Seven Habits of Highly Effective People_. He speaks of relationships (of all kinds) as being like a bank account. Everything we do with and for another person can be seen as a deposit or withdrawal to the bank account. His point, which I try not to forget, is that the two people in the relationship may see these deposits or withdrawals differently.

A stark example of this was related as a story by Randall Williams in his house concert last weekend. A man had told him about his regrets. His wife had asked him to tell her that he loved her more often. He gruffly said that she knew it and he wasn’t comfortable repeating it to her. I think that he thought it perhaps was a feminine thing that wasn’t him. He would do other things to show her that he loved her, but he didn’t say it often. When she had lapsed into a coma just before dying, he repeated to her over and over, “I love you. I love you.” She could no longer speak, but I like to think that she heard him and knew that it had always been true throughout their 60 years of marriage.

Often people give love the way that they receive it without realizing that for others that may be seen as a withdrawal from the bank account. They want to receive love the way that is most comfortable for them. I think perhaps, too, that some people like to give love in one way and receive it in another. I am certainly fond of physical affection, which is why I give and receive hugs of friends whenever I can find an excuse to do so. I like gifts at particular times, but I don’t necessarily receive them well. I love giving gifts, but if I feel that people are overly generous with me, I’ll start to keep a tally in my mind and try to be sure to give back things of equal value. Sometimes I don’t feel able to do that, so it can make me uncomfortable.

I’m beginning to realize that not all of my friends are nearly as hug friendly as I am. I try to remember this.

My sister requested more examples, especially on the bank account metaphor. When you hug a nonhugger, you think you're giving them a gift (making a deposit), because you're expressing your love and affection towards them. For some, who even are huggers, there may be more going on. They might feel uncomfortable with where you are - is it a public place? is it too private? is it semi-private, but the wrong person may walk by and get the wrong impression? Sometimes they may worry that you're giving the wrong impression. Instead of being able to receive the hug, they see what you're doing as a withdrawal - perhaps taking out a large sum of the credit left in your relationship bank account with that person.

When we don't know/recognize this, we can continue to try to put in deposits in our way (hugging) when the other person gets madder or more distant, because that is a withdrawal for them.

Poetry and Metaphors.

I go back and forth and across w/ being a stress case, not caring (procrastinating), loving, praying, working, stressing, not caring, loving, praying

and in the middle, there's the crying over stuff that my classes have been bringing up.

Seminary is awesome and horrible and hard and great

and brutal and beautiful.

It's a gift and a curse. I listened to a sermon about knowing, not knowing and not knowing what you don't know. There's a great deal that I don't know, but much, much more that I didn't know I didn't know. That seems to imply that there are more things that I still don't know that I don't know. Sometimes it rather hurts my head to try to think about.

Have you ever tried to ponder God in many different ways all at the same time and then realize that you're going to be graded on how well you learned someone's perspective of who God is? It's not something that I can do dispassionately.

I'm not generally poetic, but seminary makes me want to try. I can't do the regimented rhyming or counting stresses in syllables, but I can work on using descriptive words and metaphors.

I was really moved by the paper by McFague about metaphors for God. All the words that we use to try to represent God are metaphors, since no human words can entirely encompass who God is.

An extremely effective metaphor for me about the difficulty of describing God and God's kingdom is about the fish in the pond. All of the other fish aren't interested in anything beyond the pond, except one. This fish swims around and around the very edges until he has enough speed to be able to burst out through the surface and jump up to see what's outside and above the pond. He sees trees and cattle grazing, but he doesn't know what they are. He sees birds flying and doesn't have words to describe what they are doing.

When he comes back down into the pond, he is very excited about what he has seen. He tries to describe the trees without the words for tree or trunk or branches or leaves. He points to the marshy grasses that grow up from the bottom and continue up past the top of the pond. He says that these large objects are like this, but thicker and solid, not moving with the wind. They have more than one part, also solid, and end with rounded flat bits that move.

He has no words for the cattle, since there are no 4-legged mammals in the pond, and so on.

It's difficult to describe what we have seen when it is so different from our experience that there are no words.

Ponderings on the anonymity of cyberspace

I used to wonder about how individuals could pour out all of their innermost thoughts, struggles, desires into the world in a blog. How could people say what I didn't/wouldn't want to share with my closest friends and share them with innumerable strangers? I think that it is a part of our confessional collective American past (which has spread out into other first-world countries). We need to share our sins/ failings/ admissions of falling short of our potential with *someone* and that has been replaced by sharing it with *anyone* or *everyone*. I don't know that it's the same. I don't know that it is even necessarily always constructive, but it certainly seems to be cathartic.

I've been asked/ it was recommended to me that I do journaling during this time of seminary.

Why am I here? God sent me and I said yes. Isaiah 6 - "Here I am, send me!" It reminds me of Shrek, "Pick me! Pick me! Pick me!" Well, I got picked and it turns out that I thought I knew what I was signing up for, but I didn't. Not at all. I figured that I would learn something about the Bible, learn the original languages of the Bible and take a few baby steps towards becoming a Bible scholar. My late friend, mentor, and honorary family member, Elaine Follis was a Bible Scholar. I am not. I may, by the grace of God, one day become one, but I wonder if I will ever accept that title in my own mind. People have already tried to bestow it on me, who are not taking Bible classes, but it does not, at least yet, belong.

Sometimes I wonder if I'm taking the nudge, well shove really, that God gave me to go to seminary and if I'm running in the right or wrong direction. (What would the right direction be? The wrong one? How would I know?) In my theology class this semester, I learned that it is very common that people worship something other than God, while they say that they are monotheists. Few, really, would like, even, to worship God, even though many say that they would/do. (This is Richard Niebuhr's work). There are many distractions that are easier to worship - money, clothes, intellectualism, etc. Some are more insidious - church, my religious concepts, how I worship - my routine. That's the tricky part. When we are not wholly willing to change what we believe, how we act, indeed, who we are, when God tells us, then we're not truly worshiping God. While I can intellectually accept this (which is a step (or many) in maturity from where I was a few years ago), I don't really know where I fall in all of this. I suppose, as Ben Franklin said, If I were to say that I had succeeded in becoming humble, then I should not have done so. He left humble on his list of traits that he was working on after all of the others had been marked off.

I think that we cannot really judge if we are worshiping God or not. Only God can do that, and I haven't heard how I'm doing. We have a directive that I am working on/towards in the meantime: "Love the Lord your God with all your heart, mind and soul. And love your neighbor as yourself." I've spent a lot of time and energy in the beginning and the middle. I'm going to work on the end this week.

That's enough for today. I wonder if there's anyone out there. If not, that's fine. :) God bless, nonetheless.